INTERVIEW: Dr H K Chopra, President, Cardiological Society of India

For the first time in the world we created the great hypertension survey of India where 1,80,000 people were surveyed for blood pressure within a span of 8 hours.Shahid Akhter | ETHealthWorld | Updated: November 09, 2015, 11:11 IST

Dr H K Chopra, President, Cardiological Society of India ( CSI) , talks to ETHealthworld about the rapid increase in the number of patients suffering from hypertension and how certain policy changes and few preventive measures can dislodge this silent killer.

1. How do you see the growing menace of coronary artery diseases in India ?

Heart attack is happening in India to a very large extent and this is because of a very high prevalence of obesity and hypertension. When we control obesity we control heart attack. Today 65% of individuals between the age group of 40-60 are suffering from obesity.

Pot belly is the most powerful predictor of people suffering from pre- mature heart disease. Obesity is a real curse and we must control it if we really want to reduce the rising menace of coronary artery disease in India.

National Blood Pressure Survey recently concluded that 40% of the patients have hypertension at the age of 50. High blood pressure and obesity are the real challenges for us and the time to act is now.

2. What are we doing to prevent the prevailing condition from worsening further ?

For the first time in the world that we created the largest hypertension survey of India where 1,80,000 people were surveyed for blood pressure within a span of 8 hours. So CSI has created a world record on the prevalent state of hypertension and they discovered that the awareness rate was very low. The treatment modalities are underestimated and the people don’t take proper treatment.

We should discourage wrong methods of treatment, increase and encourage early diagnoses and early effective treatment. Unfortunately it is not being taken seriously in India though it is a silent killer.

3. What are your views on online pharmacy?

In online pharmacy there will be at least some accountability on what kind of dosage the doctor is prescribing to which kind of patient. The doctor’s signature will work, every record will be kept and accountability will be much better.

When a patient goes to a chemist to take a medicine, nobody knows what they are taking and there is no record. It would be very informative to collect the data from the pharmacy itself for our patients.

This way we can easily demarcate what our general physicians, consultant physicians and cardiologists are doing and this would really help us in deciding the strategy for prevention of a high morbidity and mortality of hypertension.

4. What measures are being taken to generate awareness on hypertension?

India has to go in a digital way in order to create awareness. We must create an app on hypertension care. CSI has already created a smart heart app which is going to be released very soon. This app gives awareness about all the risk factors, information to the people about the phone numbers of PCI-capable hospitals.

Same way an app has to be created on hypertension. Media should provide at least a column where they are talking about hypertension and healthy heart through which they would create awareness.

Most importantly, the government of India should come forward to create BP check up booths everywhere, in which we just put our hand to check our BP and have a record.

5. How can we achieve still better results?

The policies are not adequate, the reason being that it is all governed by non medical people. Without the involvement of CSI in the advocacy and policy we cannot achieve anything. Not only CSI, it can be any medical organisation. They have to be involved so that they can give the medical inputs.

Managing and advocating the policy only by administrator is neither feasible nor practical. There needs to be a mind shift on more of wellness programmes rather than illness programmes.

Subscribe ETHealthworld Newsletter

Lyrica, known generically as pregabalin, was originally developed for epilepsy but further research showed it could also help patients suffering from neuropathic pain, which soon became its main market.

With this acquisition, Nephroplus will further strengthen its servicing capacity as the dominant dialysis centre network and will have a presence in 18 states of India with 176 centers across 97 cities.